Jun 14

Jun 14 What to Keep in your Keepsake File Box

Children are constantly bringing home paperwork from school, church, and even camp, that can quickly pile up on your countertop if you do not have a system in place for staying on top of it. We have created our Keepsake File Boxes to give you a designated place for all of those important papers that come home. However, have you found yourself wondering, “What should I actually keep from what my child brings home from school, church or camp?”

We have a few suggestions for you to help with this dilemma

Here are some things we recommend keeping:

Artwork
Certificates of achievement
Poems/short stories
Special projects
Programs from school events
Assignments that reflect your child’s interests during that year
Paperwork/Artwork that shows your child’s unique personality

Make sure to keep the big picture in mind, this is something that you will eventually hand over to your child. Although, alllll of the tiny handprint and footprint pictures are absolutely adorable and we want to keep every single one of them, your child may only care about a couple of them when they are older. Therefore, keep a few, but not all. It may not be handprints and footprints that are your weakness, but having the thought in mind that this is one day for your child and not you, you can think objectively about what your child may actually want to see that means something to them from their childhood.

We suggest keeping as much as you want, especially in the beginning as it comes home, but then make sure you go back through all of the papers/art at the end of the school year and make sure you only keep things that still are sentimental in the end. This also gives you a chance to look over everything at once and not keep duplicates or a lot of things that are similar.

If you have an older child, they can even go through this process with you and allow them to keep the things that are important to them. Ultimately, you and your child are the only ones that can decide what papers hold enough significance to justify saving them long term. Keep in mind though that your kids will be better able to enjoy going through their childhood keepsakes if you have narrowed it down to a manageable collection of their most prized work.